by Jess C Scott
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[4] SKINS
“Welcome to Paradise!” Aleksandra Nikolic sailed into the main sitting room of the $30-million yacht she and her husband had recently purchased.
Really? Fifteen-year old Laer looked around at one of the dwellings his good friend’s relatives called “home.”
“Nice crib, huh,” Stefan murmured.
“Don’t speak that way,” Aleksandra said sharply. She turned around, striking a pose in her impeccable Carolina Herrera gown. “You don’t come from the ghetto.”
Stefan didn’t argue with his step aunt.
Laer nervously ran a hand through his spiky hair. He wasn’t quite sure how to politely put across that the lavishness was quite, quite suffocating.
The two teenage boys stayed close to each other, seeking comfort in each other’s presence. Both of them had come from backgrounds that were vastly different from the world of the super-rich.
Aleksandra’s husband, Andre, gave a quick nod and smile to the boys as he continued chatting over the phone with one of his lawyers. Customs officials had just seized several trophies made from the skins of endangered animals from the couple’s Miami beachfront estate. The discovery of the exotic skins had resulted in a $30,000 fine, a fee which his lawyer was working on reducing.
The yacht, named the Mystère, also contained a host of similar trophies.
Aleksandra trotted out statistics like a shopping list, running through the various materials on the walls and floors as they along. “That’s bamboo, that’s oak, that’s eucalyptus, that’s crocodile…”
Laer was getting giddy from the zig-zag pattern of zebra-skinned beddings. There was a jaguar skin rug, complete with the head, open mouth crying out in perpetual silent pain. The tiger and lion heads on one side of the wall eyed the Mystère’s guests too, with their cold lifeless eyes forever frozen in time.
Laer leaned against the dining table for some balance when he saw a cigarette holder made from python skin, next to a cigar box wrapped in elephant hide.
“Andre is spending $10 million on a gallery for his world-class collection of ivory,” Stefan had mentioned to Laer earlier that week.
Laer had heard of the Nikolics’s taste for collecting exotic animal skin clothing and furniture, though he questioned whether Stefan had been telling the truth or grossly exaggerating. It was nauseating to discover that Stefan had not embellished any facts at all.
“Andre had a strong idea of creating something…modern,” Aleksandra explained to the boys. “He said he wanted both details and clean lines. It’s genius.”
She put a hand out to the walls of one room, which were covered in ghostly white stingray hides, while the walls in the next room were covered in hand-stitched calf’s leather.
The main deck featured two Michel Haillard chairs made from alligator hides and sienna-hued horns from a deer-like animal called the kudu.
“I love beauty,” Aleksandra yattered on, “and I don’t understand ugliness in fashion, so I admire all the people who are making this world more beautiful.”
“Beautiful,” Laer repeated absent-mindedly, taking in the gruesome décor. Please explain, how spilling the blood of animals for vanity is beautiful?
Aleksandra took the indifferent silence that chilled his heart as speechless admiration.
When no one was looking, Laer tested if his magic could work on the high seas by conjuring a basic flame spell in the palm of his hand. The pale blue flame lit up in his hand without any trouble.
Laer’s boyish good looks contradicted the seething rage hidden below the surface.
Amidst all the carnage he had thus witnessed in what the Nikolics termed “luxurious details,” he knew which one made the biggest impression on him. It was the exotic Michel Haillard horned chairs covered in crocodile skin with the tails that slunk out onto the floor, like the distended tongues often seen in persons hanged on the gallows.